Trump news live: President-elect predicted Joe Biden would pardon son Hunter

Donald Trump predicted President Joe Biden would pardon son Hunter when asked if he would do it himself.

The president-elect was on the campaign trail when he was asked about the troubled first son's legal probolems.

He told Fox News: 'I wouldn’t do anything that would be overt in terms of Hunter, it’s a sad situation.

'I’ll bet you the father probably pardons him, we’ll see what happens, but he’s a bad boy, no question about it.'

Despite Biden and the White House consistently saying there wouldn't be a pardon, the 82-year-old president went through with it on Sunday night anyway.

Many predicted that it was bound to happen, especially after he announced he wouldn't be running for a second term in office.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Alina Habba is furious at the hypocrisy of President Joe Biden and accused him of using his son Hunter as a 'sacrificial lamb.'

Habba, who rose to prominence as Donald Trump's lawyer, responded after the president announced Sunday evening he was pardoning Hunter Biden, 54, for his three felony charges and potentially sparing him jail time.

She said that beside Biden lying for years about his intent to pardon his son, the Justice Department at the same time is denying January 6 prisoners and defendants the right to due process.

'The issue here is not just the pardon itself—it's the blatant hypocrisy,' Habba told DailyMail.com.

She continued. 'The White House repeatedly assured the American people that this would never happen, tripling down on their promises before the election. They lied.'

'Meanwhile, January 6th defendants languish in solitary confinement, denied due process for years, treated as enemies of the state,' Habba lamented.

With the announcement over the weekend, Trump is now suggesting he will move to pardon all those jailed, convicted or prosecuted in relation to January 6.

As we transition to the 119th Congress, Senate Democrats stand ready and willing to work with Senate Republicans to provide advice and consent as we evaluate all of the incoming president’s nominations.

In particular, we commit to working in a bipartisan fashion to process each nominee by reviewing standard FBI background-investigation materials, scheduling hearings and markups in the committees of jurisdiction, and considering nominees on the Senate floor. In our system of checks and balances, the Senate plays a vital role in ensuring the President appoints well-qualified public officials that will dutifully serve the American people and honor their oaths to the Constitution.

Regardless of party, the Senate has upheld this sacred duty for generations and we should not and must not waiver in our Constitutional duty. We look forward to joining you in these efforts as soon as possible once the Senate and its committees are organized in January.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter at the White House

Online critics are not impressed with First Lady Jill Biden's Christmas decorations at the White House this year.

The holiday decor was revealed the morning after President Joe Biden made the bombshell announcement that he is pardoning his son Hunter, 54, right before jetting off to Africa for an official trip to Angola.

Dr. Biden's theme around the White House this year was 'A Season of Peace and Light,' but some said that the decorations reminded them more of the 'circus' and called the set up 'tacky.'

'White House Christmas decorations are Circus themed. How fitting,' Sen. Josh Hawley 's Communications Director Abigail Jackson wrote on X.

The official White House Christmas tree in the blue room this year was hard to view, as the actual fir was hidden behind a carousel of fake animals.

There was also what appeared to be a maypole in the shape of a circus tent draping from the top of the tree.

Another room featured multi-colored ribbon that replaced the drapes over the windows and looked like the entrance to a fun house.

Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, told Grassley who will be leading the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee next year:

Should I earn the trust and the nomination from all of the senators, I will do my best every day to work tirelessly for the American people, and I will make you, the president and our country proud.

Bondi was tapped to be Trump's attorney general after former Rep. Matt Gaetz removed himself from consideration amid a sex scandal.

President-elect Donald Trump issued an extraordinary threat to Hamas, saying if hostages are not released by his inauguration there will be 'hell to pay' in the Middle East.

Trump issued the stark threat on his Truth Social site, on a day the Israel Defense Force confirmed the death of American-Isreali hostage Omer Maxim, saying he died defending a kibbutz during the October 7 Hamas attack inside Israel.

Hamas also two days ago released a harrowing hostage video of American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander, who has been held captive for 420 days, even as the U.S. helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

'Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East - But it’s all talk, and no action!' Trump wrote.

Legal expert John Yoo tells DailyMail.com:

Hunter Biden’s pardon brings a failed presidency to its ignominious end.    The President’s pardon authority has few limits — there is no doubt that Joe Biden has the constitutional power to pardon his son.  

But the Founders gave Presidents this power to show mercy and to break up conspiracies, not to benefit a Presiden's own family.  There is no mercy necessary here; Hunter was convicted by a jury of his peers in Delaware on gun charges, and he pled guilty of massive tax fraud and evasion in a second case.  

He was not unjustly prosecuted, unless President Biden believes he is the unjust one — he is the head of the executive branch that investigated and charged Hunter; he could have ordered the charges dropped at any time.  But what this reveals most of all is that the American people were fortunate to have avoided a second Biden term.  

Here is a President who accused  his main rival of lying, breaking his clearest commitment to the American people: that he would not pardon his son.  

Here is a President who accused his main rival of interfering with the justice system, doing exactly that after a failed campaign of law fare.  

Here is a President who accused his rival of putting himself above his country, doing exactly that: putting himself and his family above the best interests of his country.

Joe Biden arrived in Angola on Monday for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa.

It was supposed to make good on a long-standing promise to the continent, but it is now seen as an elaborate ruse to run from questions about his Sunday announcement that he was pardoning his son Hunter.

Angola has been the biggest beneficiary of Chinese loans on the continent. And the visit was designed to bolster its turn to the West and reinforce the Lobito Corridor project, which links resource-rich Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean.

But Biden will now have to spend the trip dodging reporters' questions about his son.

Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado publicly slammed Biden's decision to pardon his son Hunter.

Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat, also piled on, calling it 'wrong.'

President Joe Biden 's press secretary was grilled by journalists aboard Air Force One on Monday morning as she tried to defend his decision to pardon his son after spending months saying he would not use his position to get Hunter Biden off the hook.

Karine Jean-Pierre found herself in the firing line because she had also repeatedly said the president would not pardon his son of tax and gun crimes.

'Could those statements now be seen as lies [by] the American people?' she was asked during the flight to Angola.

'Is there really a credibility issue here, given now this announcement?'

Jean-Pierre insisted that the president was a truthful man who only reached his decision at the weekend, as he said in his Sunday statement.

The top Democrat on the House Committee on Administration confirmed a member of his staff, Michael Hopkins, was arrested on Monday.

A statement from the office of Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., said the staffer was arrested by Capitol Police.

This morning, our office was informed that a member of our staff was arrested by Capitol Police. We are currently gathering more information regarding the circumstances of the arrest.

Our office is fully committed to cooperating with the investigation. As Ranking Member of the Committee on House Administration, Congressman Morelle is devoted to ensuring a safe and secure workplace for all.

Capitol Police confirmed that the staffer was arrested after ammunition was found in his bag.

'At approximately 8:45 a.m., a House staffer entered the Cannon House Office Building and put his bag through screening. USCP officers noticed what appeared to be ammunition on the x-ray screen.'

'After a hand search of the bag, officers found four ammunition magazines and eleven rounds of ammunition. The staffer told the officers that he forgot the ammunition was in the bag. 38-year-old Michael Hopkins was arrested, and he is facing charges for unlawful possession of ammunition, including one charge for possession of a high-capacity magazine.'

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

President Joe Biden promised the American people for years that he would not move to pardon his son Hunter despite multiple lawsuits against him.

But after going back on his word Sunday night, multiple reports emerged detailing how Biden was considering a pardon for months after Hunter's conviction in a federal gun case over the summer.

While it's been reported that Biden made the decision at mass on Saturday, two people with direct knowledge of the discussions told NBC News that the president was discussing a pardon with close aides as early as Hunter's conviction was handed down on June 11, 2024.

The individuals said a decision was made for Biden to publicly state he would not pardon his 54-year-old son even though he still privately weighed the option.

Others close with Biden told Axios that internal family lobbying combined with the president's own feelings of guilt over prosecution of his son made them believe he would change his mind about a pardon.

'Once it became clear that the Justice Department was dead set on jail time, this was always how it was ending,' a person in the Biden orbit claimed.

Biden said in his statement on the pardon that he 'wrestled' with the decision, but sources told CNN he began telling staff about the pardon on Saturday evening – the same night he attended mass with his family, including Hunter, on Nantucket.

President Joe Biden took stick last week for buying a book by Rashid Khalidi that argues that the conflict in Palestine and Israel should be seen as a colonial conflict. That argument is controversial in some pro-Israel circles.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby, talking to journalists aboard Air Force One, was asked why he had bought the book at this critical time in the Middle East.

It's just a book, is the gist of his answer.

It reminds me of what Mark Twain said: that a man who refuses to read good books has no advantage over a man who cannot or won't read those books. I can't speak to why the president made that particular purchase ... wasn't with him, haven't had the chance to ask him, but he reads broadly, and he's fascinated by history and the lessons of history and where that can take us going forward. So that doesn't surprise me that he would go into a bookstore and get a book of history, particularly about the Middle East, to try to imbibe and to keep learning.

As President-elect Donald Trump appoints his Cabinet and builds his adminiistration he has thrown compliments at his new picks.

Penta Group has been keeping a tally of the various terms of praise he has used in announcements, and the results have been reported by Axios.

The 'Trumpology tracker' found that the compliment 'Great Honor' has been bestowed on only three people - Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio, Agriculture Secretary Brookew Rollins, and Matt Gaetz, who has since withdrawn as Trump's pick for Attorney General.

Linda McMahon, his pick for United States Administrator of the Small Business Administration, received 'great honor'.

Trump has said he is 'thrilled' twice, 'proud' four times, 'very pleased four times, and 'pleased' 18 times.

Penta CEO Matt McDonald told Axios:

There is one final decider and, as his statements come out, you can see slight nuances in the language. It kind of reminds me of the old Kremlinology of the Cold War, where people were parsing whatever public indicators there were to tell who was up or who was out.

By Geoff Earle, Deputy U.S. Political Editor

Reporters seeking an explanation for President Joe Biden’s U-turn on pardoning his son may be forced to shout an unwelcome question during a visit to a slavery museum in Angola. And depending on how White House aides set up the president's itinerary, Biden can choose to ignore them.

The president’s ‘comprehensive’ schedule for his Africa visit released by the White House does not reveal any plans for a press conference or formal opportunity to engage with the president on what may be his last foreign trip.

There is plenty to ask about, including why Biden issued a sweeping pardon dating back to 2014 for any offenses even beyond the tax and gun charges brought against his son, and criticism from Democrats that he put family over country. Biden’s brief meeting with the PM of Cabo Verde was closed to the press, although reporters will be allowed to see Biden when he lands in Angola, meets embassy staff, and delivers remarks at than National Museum of Slavery. (A majority of African Americans have Angolan ancestry).

He has additional events Wednesday, with plans to tour a port terminal and food processing factory. As of now, Biden is leaving it to his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, to answer for the series of times she said definitively he would not pardon Hunter. She will be joined by national security spokesman John Kirby for a ‘gaggle’ in flight on Air Force One, where the small group of reporters who signed up for the trip can query them off-camera with engine noise in the background. Biden took heat in the media for failing to hold any substantive interaction with the press on his recent trip to Peru and Brazil.

President-elect Donald Trump has already named his Cabinet and key members of his incoming White House staff.

Decades before they became top players in the MAGA movement, Trump's aides were basketball players, cheerleaders and named to their high school's homecoming court.

DailyMail.com dug through the archives and found their photos - floppy hair and all.

It's no surprise that some of these individuals were heavily involved in school clubs and sports.

They went on to become television personalities, hold statewide office, even play professional sports before being asked by 78-year-old Republican to join the Trump 2.0 White House.

On November 5, Trump became the second former president in history to win a non-consecutive term, with only President Grover Cleveland holding the honor before.

He quickly stacked his Cabinet and White House with individuals who had supported him on the campaign trail.

Interestingly, he didn't ask any of his previous Cabinet members to serve in the same role they did before.

See if you can guess the Cabinet pick by their high school photo - and read about their childhood years before their careers in politics:

Greg Stanton, a Democratic congressman from Arizona, criticized Joe Biden's pardoning of his son Hunter. He said:

I respect President Biden, but I think he got this one wrong.

This wasn’t a politically-motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies, and was convicted by a jury of his peers.

President-elect Donald Trump announced for the second time in two days he will name a family member to a top government post.

This time, Trump says he will bring on Massad Boulos, the billionaire father in law of Tiffany Trump, as a senior advisor on the Middle East at the White House.

Boulos played a role in Trump's effort to win over Arab American voters in battleground states, touting his efforts to end wars in Arab language interviews with Lebanese media.

He was born in Lebanon, moved to Texas as a teenager, and ran his family's business conglomerate in Nigeria. Now, he will be providing counsel to his powerful relative at a time of proliferating conflict around the Middle East, including the ongoing conflict in Gaza and a rebel group's stunning seizure of Aleppo in Syria.

'I am proud to announce that Massad Boulos will serve as Senior Advisor to the President on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs,' Trump posted on his Truth Social site.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk received unexpected support for his plans to shrink the federal government - from Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders.

The Vermont senator, who twice came in second place for the Democratic nomination for president, praised Musk's plans to reign in defense spending, saying: 'Elon Musk is right.'

Sanders posted on social media: 'Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.'

But Sanders is not the first Democrat who has expressed support for Musk's plans to shrink defense spending as the co-head of Trump's proposed Department of Government Efficiency, along with businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat representing California in the House of Representatives, previously told CNN there are other liberals who would work with DOGE to cut 'waste, fraud and abuse' from the Defense budget.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter at the White House

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, 300 volunteers worked tirelessly to decorate the White House for the Biden’s final Christmas at the Executive Residence.

The White House Christmas decorations were unveiled Monday morning – just hours after President Joe Biden announced he was walking back on years of promises and pardoning his son Hunter.

First Lady Jill Biden will meet with the volunteers later on Monday to thank them for their work and celebrate the start of the Christmas season.

‘It has been the honor of our lives to serve as your President and First Lady,’ the Bidens wrote in a guidebook to the 2024 White House decorations. ‘Our hope is for the Nation to be blessed with the peace and light of the holiday season.’

In striking a sentimental tone, they continued:

At the holidays, Americans come together every year in fellowship and faith, reminding us that we are stronger as a community than we are apart. The strength of our country, and the soul of our Nation, come from you.

The former Florida state attorney general plans to make the rounds on Capitol Hill on Monday, DailyMail.com has learned.

She will be meeting with top Republican senators, including Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who will be chairing the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee next Congress.

Bondi will meet with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is the current top Republican on the committee at 5 p.m.

Some Americans have urged president Joe Biden to pardon president-elect Donald Trump after the Democrat wiped his son Hunter's criminal record clean.

Biden made the shock announcement Sunday night that he would issue a presidential pardon for his troubled son, calling his prosecution 'selective' and 'unfair.'

He did so after the White House repeatedly denied he had plans to pardon his son, who will be pardoned for any crimes he may have committed 'from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.'

Following the shock decision, many social media users have asked that Biden also pardon Trump.

They have argued that Trump is also facing politically-motivated cases and thus should be pardoned the same was Hunter was.

Trump was convicted of 31 counts of falsiying business records with his hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, but only the Governor of New York can pardon him for the state crimes.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had repeatedly emphasized that President Joe Biden would not intervene in legal proceedings involving his son, Hunter Biden, with her words coming back to haunt her on Sunday night.

As recently as November 8, days after Donald Trump's election victory, Jean-Pierre categorically ruled out a pardon or clemency for the younger Biden, saying, 'We've been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is "no".'

Social media users were quick to mock Jean-Pierre's hollow words. 'Well, we’re all thinking it.. this didn’t age well,' wrote one, encapsulating the feeling of many GOP supporters.

Hunter Biden was convicted in June of lying on a federal form when he purchased a gun in 2018 and swore that he wasn't a drug user.

Just months later, he pleaded guilty to charges accusing him of a scheme to avoid paying at least $1.4 million in taxes.

Prosecutors alleged he lived lavishly while flouting the tax law, spending his cash on things like strippers and luxury hotels - 'in short, everything but his taxes.'

Donald Trump signaled Sunday night that he intends to use Joe Biden's pardon of his son Hunter to his own advantage, linking it to his own prospective controversial pardon of January 6 defendants.

'Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!' Trump wrote, in his first public comment since Biden announced the pardon Sunday.

That came not long after Fox News commentator Charlie Hurt made the linkage.

'I think he should at least commute the sentences of all of them and pardoned every single one that was obviously just following the person in front of them wandering through the capital,' he said.

'Pardon every single one of them. There were some that did more than just that. And I think he should commute their sentences and let them all out! Every single one of them,' he said.

Critics of Joe Biden's shock pardon of his son Hunter have noted a key detail that connects the reprieve to the younger Biden's time on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma.

The bombshell U-turn decision to grant Hunter a pardon comes just weeks after The White House denied the president would make the drastic move in the final months of his lame duck presidency.

The document grants a full and unconditional pardon for Hunter's potential crimes committed 'from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.'

This has led many to theorize that there is something lurking underneath the pardon which is meant to acquit Hunter Biden of charges that came to light in 2018.

'Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma in 2014,' wrote conservative commentator Liz Wheeler. 'By pardoning Hunter for any crimes he “may have committed” from 2014-2024, Joe Biden is protecting his family’s criminal cartel. Wow.'

She added that Biden is protecting his son from the possible new head of the FBI: 'This pardon ain’t about the gun charge. The Big Guy is protecting himself from Kash Patel.'

Hunter referred to his father, Joe, as 'the big guy' in a 2017 email about a business deal that raked in millions for the Biden family and their cohorts.

'Truly incredible that Joe Biden pardoned Hunter starting in 2014 — the year he was appointed a board member of Burisma,' wrote Greg Price. 'You can’t make it up.'